rusty

My hollyhocks are rusty..a fungal disease which doesn't kill them but ruins the leaves and weakens their stems. I cut the leaves off - the flowers are still beautiful.

I grew these hollyhocks from seeds which I collected on a visit to my parents' house a few years ago. We visited Charleston farmhouse, near Firle, where the Bloomsbury group had had their country retreat. The garden was a mazing, and inside the house, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell had covered every surface with their paintings.I loved it. I bought a tiny dish in the shop, made by a French ceramicist, with a slipware design of a girl with red hair. It reminds me of Charleston every day.

We went to visit nearby Berwick Church, where Grant and Bell painted murals. On the way into the churchyard, we passed a beautiful row of hollyhocks of all colours and it was from here that I collected the seeds.

Just found my BLIP from that visit :-)